6101. Jnani
does not Grasp, nor Hold Questioner: How does the jnani proceed when he
needs something to be done? Does he make plans, decide about details and
execute them? Nisargadatta: Jnani understands a situation fully and
knows at once what needs be done. That is all. The rest happens by
itself, and to a large extent unconsciously. The jnani’s identity with
all that is, is so complete, that as he responds to the universe, so
does the universe respond to him. He is supremely confident that once a
situation has been cognised, events will move in adequate response. The
ordinary man is personally concerned, he counts his risks and chances,
while the jnani remains aloof, sure that all will happen as it must; and
it does not matter much what happens, for ultimately the return to
balance and harmony is inevitable. The heart of things is at peace.
Questioner: I have understood that personality is an illusion, and alert
detachment, without loss of identity, is our point of contact with the
reality. Will you, please, tell me -- at this moment are you a person or
a self-aware identity? Nisargadatta: I am both. But the real self cannot
be described except in terms supplied by the person, in terms of what I
am not. All you can tell about the person is not the self, and you can
tell nothing about the self, which would not refer to the person; as it
is, as it could be, as it should be. All attributes are personal. The
real is beyond all attributes. Questioner: Are you sometimes the self
and sometimes the person? Nisargadatta: How can I be? The person is what
I appear to be to other persons. To myself I am the infinite expanse of
consciousness in which innumerable persons emerge and disappear in
endless succession. Questioner: How is it that the person, which to you
is quite illusory, appears real to us? Nisargadatta: You, the self,
being the root of all being, consciousness and joy, impart your reality
to whatever you perceive. This imparting of reality takes place
invariably in the now, at no other time, because past and future are
only in the mind. ‘Being' applies to the now only. Questioner: Is not
eternity endless too? Nisargadatta: Time is endless, though limited,
eternity is In the split moment of the now. We miss it because the mind
is ever shuttling between the past and the future. It will not stop to
focus the now. It can be done with comparative ease, if interest is
aroused. Questioner: What arouses interest? Nisargadatta: Earnestness,
the sign of maturity. Questioner: And how does maturity come about?
Nisargadatta: By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life
in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and
dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise. Questioner: Is
such concentration at all possible? Nisargadatta: Try. One step at a
time is easy. Energy flows from earnestness. Questioner: I find I am not
earnest enough. Nisargadatta: Self-betrayal is a grievous matter. It
rots the mind like cancer. The remedy lies in clarity and integrity of
thinking. Try to understand that you live in a world of illusions,
examine them and uncover their roots. The very attempt to do so will
make you earnest, for there is bliss in right endeavour. Questioner:
Where will it lead me? Nisargadatta: Where can it lead you if not to its
own perfection? Once you are well-established in the now, you have
nowhere else to go what you are timelessly, you express eternally.
Questioner: Are you one or many? Nisargadatta: I am one, but appear as
many. Questioner: Why does one appear at all? Nisargadatta: It is good
to be, and to be conscious. Questioner: Life is sad. Nisargadatta:
Ignorance causes sorrow. Happiness follows understanding. Questioner:
Why should ignorance be painful? Nisargadatta: It is at the root of all
desire and fear, which are painful states and the source of endless
errors. Questioner: I have seen people supposed to have realised,
laughing and crying. Does it not show that they are not free of desire
and fear? Nisargadatta: They may laugh and cry according to
circumstances, but inwardly they are cool and clear, watching detachedly
their own spontaneous reactions. Appearances are misleading and more so
in the case of a jnani. Questioner: I do not understand you.
Nisargadatta: The mind cannot understand, for the mind is trained for
grasping and holding while the jnani is not-grasping and not holding.
Questioner: What am I holding on to, which you do not? Nisargadatta: You
are a creature of memories; at least you imagine yourself to be so. I am
entirely unimagined. I am what I am, not identifiable with any physical
or mental state. Questioner: An accident would destroy your equanimity.
Nisargadatta: The strange fact is that it does not. To my own surprise,
I remain as I am -- pure awareness, alert to all that happens.
Questioner: Even at the Moment of death? Nisargadatta: What is it to me
that the body dies? Questioner: Don't you need it to contact the world?
Nisargadatta: I do not need the world. Nor am I in one. The world you
think of is in your own mind. I can see it through your eyes and mind,
but I am fully aware that it is a projection of memories; it is touched
by the real only at the point of awareness, which can be only now.
Questioner: The only difference between us seems to be that while I keep
on saying that I do not know my real self, you maintain that you know it
well; is there any other difference between us? Nisargadatta: There is
no difference between us; nor can I say that I know myself, I know that
I am not describable nor definable. There is a vastness beyond the
farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is
myself. And that vastness is also love. Questioner: You see love
everywhere, while I see hatred and suffering. The history of humanity is
the history of murder, individual and collective. No other living being
so delights in killing. Nisargadatta: If you go into the motives, you
will find love, love of oneself and of one's own. People fight for what
they imagine they love. Questioner: Surely their love must be real
enough when they are ready to die for it. Nisargadatta: Love is
boundless. What is limited to a few cannot be called love. Questioner:
Do you know such unlimited love? Nisargadatta: Yes, l do. Questioner:
How does it feel? Nisargadatta: All is loved and lovable. Nothing is
excluded. Questioner: Not even the ugly and the criminal? Nisargadatta:
All is within my consciousness; all is my own. It is madness to split
oneself through likes and dislikes. I am beyond both. I am not
alienated. Questioner: To be free from like and dislike is a state of
indifference. Nisargadatta: It may look and feel so in the beginning.
Persevere in such indifference and it will blossom into an all-pervading
and all-embracing love. Questioner: One has such moments when the mind
becomes a flower and a flame, but they do not last and the life reverts
to its daily greyness. Nisargadatta: Discontinuity is the law, when you
deal with the concrete: The continuous cannot be experienced, for it has
no borders. Consciousness implies alterations, change followings change,
when one thing or state comes to an end and another begins; that which
has no borderline cannot be experienced in the common meaning of the
word. One can only be it, without knowing, but one can know what it is
not. It is definitely not the entire content of consciousness which is
always on the move. Questioner: If the immovable cannot be known, what
is the meaning and purpose of its realisation? Nisargadatta: To realise
the immovable means to become immovable. And the purpose is the good of
all that lives. Questioner: Life is movement. Immobility is death. Of
what use is death to life? Nisargadatta: I am talking of immovability,
not of immobility. You become immovable in reticence. You become a power
which gets all things right. It may or may not imply intense outward
activity, but the mind remains deep and quiet. Questioner: As I watch my
mind I find it changing all the time, mood succeeding mood in infinite
variety, while you seem to be perpetually in the same mood of cheerful
benevolence. Nisargadatta: Moods are in the mind and do not matter. Go
within, go beyond. Cease being fascinated by the content of your
consciousness. When you reach the deep layers of your true being, you
will find that the mind's surface-play affects you very little.
Questioner: There will be play all the same? Nisargadatta: A quiet mind
is not a dead mind. Questioner: Consciousness is always in movement --
it is an observable fact. Immovable consciousness is a contradiction.
When you talk of a quiet mind, what is it? Is not mind the same as
consciousness? Nisargadatta: We must remember that words are used in
many ways, according to the context. The fact is that there is little
difference between the conscious and the unconscious --- they are
essentially the same. The waking state differs from deep sleep in the
presence of the witness. A ray of awareness illumines a part of our mind
and that part becomes our dream or waking consciousness, while awareness
appears as the witness. The witness usually knows only consciousness.
Sadhana consists in the witness turning back first on his conscious,
then upon himself in his own awareness. Self-awareness is Yoga.
Questioner: If awareness is all-pervading, then a blind man, once
realised, can see? Nisargadatta: You are mixing sensations with
awareness. The jnani knows himself as he is. He is also aware of his
body being crippled and his mind being deprived of a range of sensory
perceptions. But he is not affected by the availability of eyesight, nor
by its absence. Questioner: My question is more specific; when a blind
man becomes a jnani will his eyesight be restored to him or not?
Nisargadatta: Unless his eyes and brain undergo a renovation, how can he
see? Questioner: But will they undergo a renovation? Nisargadatta: They
may or may not. It all depends on destiny and grace. But a jnani
commands a mode of spontaneous, non-sensory perception, which makes him
know things directly, without the intermediary of the senses. He is
beyond the perceptual and the conceptual, beyond the categories of time
and space, name and shape. He is neither the perceived nor the
perceiver, but the simple and the universal factor that makes perceiving
possible. Reality is within consciousness, but it is not consciousness
nor any of its contents. Questioner: What is false, the world, or my
knowledge of it? Nisargadatta: Is there a world outside your knowledge?
Can you go beyond what you know? You may postulate a world beyond the
mind, but it will remain a concept, unproved and unprovable. Your
experience is your proof, and it is valid for you only. Who else can
have your experience, when the other person is only as real as he
appears in your experience? Questioner: Am I so hopelessly lonely?
Nisargadatta: You are. as a person. In your real being vow are the
whole. Questioner: Are you a part of the world which I have in
consciousness, or are you independent? Nisargadatta: What you see is
yours and what I see is mine. The two have little in common. Questioner:
There must be some common factor which unites us. Nisargadatta: To find
the common factor you must abandon all distinctions. Only the universal
is in common. Questioner: What strikes me as exceedingly strange is that
while you say that I am merely a product of my memories and woefully
limited, I create a vast and rich world in which. everything is
contained, including you and your teaching. How this vastness is created
and contained in my smallness is what I find hard to understand. May be
you are giving me the whole truth, but I am grasping only a small part
of it. Nisargadatta: Yet, it is a fact -- the small projects the whole,
but it cannot contain the whole. However great and complete is your
world it is self-contradictory and transitory and altogether illusory.
Questioner: It may be illusory yet it is marvellous. When I look and
listen, touch, smell and taste, think and feel, remember and imagine, I
cannot but be astonished at my miraculous creativity. I look through a
microscope or telescope and see wonders, I follow the track of an atom
and hear the whisper of the stars. If I am the sole creator of all this,
then I am God indeed! But if I am God, why do I appear so small and
helpless to myself? Nisargadatta: You are God, but you do not know it.
Questioner: If I am God, then the world I create must be true.
Nisargadatta: It is true in essence, but not in appearance. Be free of
desires and fears and at once your vision will clear and you shall see
all things as they are. Or, you may say that the satoguna creates the
world, the tamoguna obscures it and the rajoguna distorts. Questioner:
This does not tell me much, because if I ask what are the gunas, the
answer will be: what creates -- what obscures -- what distorts. The fact
remains -- something unbelievable happened to me, and I do not
understand what has happened, how and why. Nisargadatta: Well, wonder is
the dawn of wisdom. To be steadily and consistently wondering is
sadhana. Questioner: I am in a world which I do not understand and
therefore, I am afraid of it. This is everybody's experience.
Nisargadatta: You have separated yourself from the world, therefore it
pains and frightens you. Discover your mistake and be free of fear.
Questioner: You are asking me to give up the world, while I want to be
happy in the world. Nisargadatta: If you ask for the impossible, who can
help you? The limited is bound to be painful and pleasant in turns. If
you seek real happiness, unassailable and unchangeable, you must leave
the world with its pains and pleasures behind you. Questioner: How is it
done? Nisargadatta: Mere physical renunciation is only a token of
earnestness, but earnestness alone does not liberate. There must be
understanding which comes with alert perceptivity, eager enquiry and
deep investigation. You must work relentlessly for your salvation from
sin and sorrow. Questioner: What is sin? Nisargadatta: All that binds
you.

I
AM THAT

Dialogues
of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

101.
Jnani does not Grasp, nor Hold

Questioner:

How does the jnani proceed when he needs something to be done? Does
he make

plans,
decide about details and execute them?

Nisargadatta:

Jnani
understands a situation fully and knows at once what needs be done.
That is all.

The
rest happens by itself, and to a large extent unconsciously. The
jnani’s identity with all that is, is

so
complete, that as he responds to the universe, so does the universe
respond to him. He is

supremely
confident that once a situation has been cognised, events will move
in adequate

response.
The ordinary man is personally concerned, he counts his risks and
chances, while the

jnani
remains aloof, sure that all will happen as it must; and it does not
matter much what happens,

for
ultimately the return to balance and harmony is inevitable. The
heart of things is at peace.

Questioner:

I have understood that personality is an illusion, and alert
detachment, without loss of identity,

is
our point of contact with the reality. Will you, please, tell me --
at this moment are you a person or

a
self-aware identity?

Nisargadatta:

I am both. But the real self cannot be described except in terms
supplied by the person, in terms

of
what I am not. All you can tell about the person is not the self,
and you can tell nothing about the

self,
which would not refer to the person; as it is, as it could be, as it
should be. All attributes are

personal.
The real is beyond all attributes.

Questioner:

Are you sometimes the self and sometimes the person?

Nisargadatta:

How can I be? The person is what I appear to be to other persons. To
myself I am the infinite

expanse
of consciousness in which innumerable persons emerge and disappear
in endless

succession.

Questioner:

How is it that the person, which to you is quite illusory, appears
real to us?

Nisargadatta:

You, the self, being the root of all being, consciousness and joy,
impart your reality to whatever

you
perceive. This imparting of reality takes place invariably in the

now,
at no other time, because past and future are only in the mind.
‘Being' applies to the now only.

Questioner:

Is not eternity endless too?

Nisargadatta:

Time is endless, though limited, eternity is In the split moment of
the

now.
We miss it because the mind is ever shuttling between the past and
the future. It will not stop to focus the

now.
It can be done with comparative ease, if interest is aroused.

Questioner:

What arouses interest?

Nisargadatta:

Earnestness, the sign of maturity.

Questioner:

And how does maturity come about?

Nisargadatta:

By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full
awareness of every moment as it

happens,
by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they
arise.

Questioner:

Is such concentration at all possible?

Nisargadatta:

Try. One step at a time is easy. Energy flows from earnestness.

Questioner:

I find I am not earnest enough.

Nisargadatta:

Self-betrayal is a grievous matter. It rots the mind like cancer.
The remedy lies in clarity and

integrity
of thinking. Try to understand that you live in a world of
illusions, examine them and

uncover
their roots. The very attempt to do so will make you earnest, for
there is bliss in right

endeavour.

Questioner:

Where will it lead me?

Nisargadatta:

Where can it lead you if not to its own perfection? Once you are
well-established in the

now,
you have nowhere else to go what you are timelessly, you express
eternally.

Questioner:

Are you one or many?

Nisargadatta:

I am one, but appear as many.

Questioner:

Why does one appear at all?

Nisargadatta:

It is good to be, and to be conscious.

Questioner:

Life is sad.

Nisargadatta:

Ignorance causes sorrow. Happiness follows understanding.

Questioner:

Why should ignorance be painful?

Nisargadatta:

It is at the root of all desire and fear, which are painful states
and the source of endless errors.

Questioner:

I have seen people supposed to have realised, laughing and crying.
Does it not show that they

are
not free of desire and fear?

Nisargadatta:

They may laugh and cry according to circumstances, but inwardly they
are cool and clear,

watching
detachedly their own spontaneous reactions. Appearances are
misleading and more so in

the
case of a jnani.

Questioner:

I do not understand you.

Nisargadatta:

The mind cannot understand, for the mind is trained for grasping and
holding while the jnani

is not-grasping and not holding.

Questioner:

What am I holding on to, which you do not?

Nisargadatta:

You are a creature of memories; at least you imagine yourself to be
so. I am entirely

unimagined.
I am what I am, not identifiable with any physical or mental state.

Questioner:

An accident would destroy your equanimity.

Nisargadatta:

The strange fact is that it does not. To my own surprise, I remain
as I am -- pure awareness,

alert
to all that happens.

Questioner:

Even at the Moment of death?

Nisargadatta:

What is it to me that the body dies?

Questioner:

Don't you need it to contact the world?

Nisargadatta:

I do not need the world. Nor am I in one. The world you think of is
in your own mind. I can see it

through
your eyes and mind, but I am fully aware that it is a projection of
memories; it is touched by

the
real only at the point of awareness, which can be only now.

Questioner:

The only difference between us seems to be that while I keep on
saying that I do not know my

real
self, you maintain that you know it well; is there any other
difference between us?

Nisargadatta:

There is no difference between us; nor can I say that I know myself,
I know that I am not

describable
nor definable. There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of
the mind. That

vastness
is my home; that vastness is myself. And that vastness is also love.

Questioner:

You see love everywhere, while I see hatred and suffering. The
history of humanity is the

history
of murder, individual and collective. No other living being so
delights in killing.

Nisargadatta:

If you go into the motives, you will find love, love of oneself and
of one's own. People fight for

what
they imagine they love.

Questioner:

Surely their love must be real enough when they are ready to die for
it.

Nisargadatta:

Love is boundless. What is limited to a few cannot be called love.

Questioner:

Do you know such unlimited love?

Nisargadatta:

Yes, l do.

Questioner:

How does it feel?

Nisargadatta:

All is loved and lovable. Nothing is excluded.

Questioner:

Not even the ugly and the criminal?

Nisargadatta:

All is within my consciousness; all is my own. It is madness to
split oneself through likes and

dislikes.
I am beyond both. I am not alienated.

Questioner:

To be free from like and dislike is a state of indifference.

Nisargadatta:

It may look and feel so in the beginning. Persevere in such
indifference and it will blossom into

an
all-pervading and all-embracing love.

Questioner:

One has such moments when the mind becomes a flower and a flame, but
they do not last and

the
life reverts to its daily greyness.

Nisargadatta:

Discontinuity is the law, when you deal with the concrete: The
continuous cannot be

experienced,
for it has no borders. Consciousness implies alterations, change
followings change,

when
one thing or state comes to an end and another begins; that which
has no borderline cannot

be
experienced in the common meaning of the word. One can only be it,
without knowing, but one

can
know what it is not. It is definitely not the entire content of
consciousness which is always on

the
move.

Questioner:

If the immovable cannot be known, what is the meaning and purpose of
its realisation?

Nisargadatta:

To realise the immovable means to become immovable. And the purpose
is the good of all that

lives.

Questioner:

Life is movement. Immobility is death. Of what use is death to life?

Nisargadatta:

I am talking of immovability, not of immobility. You become
immovable in reticence. You

become
a power which gets all things right. It may or may not imply intense
outward activity, but the

mind
remains deep and quiet.

Questioner:

As I watch my mind I find it changing all the time, mood succeeding
mood in infinite variety,

while
you seem to be perpetually in the same mood of cheerful benevolence.

Nisargadatta:

Moods are in the mind and do not matter. Go within, go beyond. Cease
being fascinated by the

content
of your consciousness. When you reach the deep layers of your true
being, you will find that

the
mind's surface-play affects you very little.

Questioner:

There will be play all the same?

Nisargadatta:

A quiet mind is not a dead mind.

Questioner:

Consciousness is always in movement -- it is an observable fact.
Immovable consciousness is

a
contradiction. When you talk of a quiet mind, what is it? Is not
mind the same as consciousness?

Nisargadatta:

We must remember that words are used in many ways, according to the
context. The fact is that

there
is little difference between the conscious and the unconscious ---
they are essentially the

same.
The waking state differs from deep sleep in the presence of the
witness. A ray of awareness

illumines
a part of our mind and that part becomes our dream or waking
consciousness, while

awareness
appears as the witness. The witness usually knows only
consciousness.

Sadhana
consists in the witness turning back first on his conscious, then
upon himself in his own awareness.

Self-awareness
is Yoga.

Questioner:

If awareness is all-pervading, then a blind man, once realised, can
see?

Nisargadatta:

You are mixing sensations with awareness. The jnani knows himself as
he is. He is also aware of

his
body being crippled and his mind being deprived of a range of
sensory perceptions. But he is

not
affected by the availability of eyesight, nor by its absence.

Questioner:

My question is more specific; when a blind man becomes a jnani will
his eyesight be restored to

him
or not?

Nisargadatta:

Unless his eyes and brain undergo a renovation, how can he see?

Questioner:

But will they undergo a renovation?

Nisargadatta:

They may or may not. It all depends on destiny and grace. But a
jnani commands a mode of

spontaneous,
non-sensory perception, which makes him know things directly,
without the

intermediary
of the senses. He is beyond the perceptual and the conceptual,
beyond the categories

of
time and space, name and shape. He is neither the perceived nor the
perceiver, but the simple

and
the universal factor that makes perceiving possible. Reality is
within consciousness, but it is not

consciousness
nor any of its contents.

Questioner:

What is false, the world, or my knowledge of it?

Nisargadatta:

Is there a world outside your knowledge? Can you go beyond what you
know? You may

postulate
a world beyond the mind, but it will remain a concept, unproved and
unprovable.

Your
experience is your proof, and it is valid for you only. Who else can
have your experience,

when
the other person is only as real as he appears in your experience?

Questioner:

Am I so hopelessly lonely?

Nisargadatta:

You are. as a person. In your real being vow are the whole.

Questioner:

Are you a part of the world which I have in consciousness, or are
you independent?

Nisargadatta:

What you see is yours and what I see is mine. The two have little in
common.

Questioner:

There must be some common factor which unites us.

Nisargadatta:

To find the common factor you must abandon all distinctions. Only
the universal is in common.

Questioner:

What strikes me as exceedingly strange is that while you say that I
am merely a product of my

memories
and woefully limited, I create a vast and rich world in which.
everything is contained,

including
you and your teaching. How this vastness is created and contained in
my smallness is

what
I find hard to understand. May be you are giving me the whole truth,
but I am grasping only a

small
part of it.

Nisargadatta:

Yet, it is a fact -- the small projects the whole, but it cannot
contain the whole. However great

and
complete is your world it is self-contradictory and transitory and
altogether illusory.

Questioner:

It may be illusory yet it is marvellous. When I look and listen,
touch, smell and taste, think and

feel,
remember and imagine, I cannot but be astonished at my miraculous
creativity. I look through

a
microscope or telescope and see wonders, I follow the track of an
atom and hear the whisper of

the
stars. If I am the sole creator of all this, then I am God indeed!
But if I am God, why do I appear

so
small and helpless to myself?

Nisargadatta:

You are God, but you do not know it.

Questioner:

If I am God, then the world I create must be true.

Nisargadatta:

It is true in essence, but not in appearance. Be free of desires and
fears and at once your vision

will
clear and you shall see all things as they are. Or, you may say that
the satoguna creates the

world,
the tamoguna obscures it and the rajoguna distorts.

Questioner:

This does not tell me much, because if I ask what are the gunas, the
answer will be: what